How to install JAVA 9 on Linux

In this tutorial, we are going to learn to install JAVA 9 on Linux machines. Java 9 released on 21, September 2017 with lots of new features ( For complete list,visit OFFICIAL JAVA WEBSITE ). In our previous tutorial, we have also discuss the installation of Java 7 & 8 on Linux, if you wish to install any of those versions, read the tutorial HERE.

Now moving on to Java 9 , we can perform the installation using two methods i.e.

1- Using the RPM provided on Official Oracle Java website.

Using this method, we can install Java 9 on CentOS/RHEL machines only.

2- Using the .tar.gz archive binaries

With this method, we can install multiple versions of java on our system. Also using this method, we can install Java 9 on CentOS/RHEL as well as other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian etc

So let’s start with 1st method,

1- Using the RPM

Though we can skip this step but if you want only single version of java on your system, than remove any older versions of the Java,

$ sudo yum remove java*

Now we need to download the RPM package file for Java 9 from Official Oracle Website. To download the package, open the terminal & execute the following command,

We can install Java 9 in any directory we want to using this method, but we will be installing it in ‘/opt’ directory. So copy the downloaded package there & extract it,

$ cp jdk-9_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz /opt

$ sudo tar -xvf jdk-9_linux-x64_bin.tar.gz

We will now install Java 9 using alternatives –install,

$ cd jdk-9

$ sudo alternatives –install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jdk-9/bin/java 2

After the java installation, we can now configure the default Java that is to be used ,

$ sudo alternatives –config java

Than you will shown all the instances on Java installed on the sytem, select the default java instance by selecting the corresponding number.

Note :- This command can also be used to change the default Java instance, in case we have installed Java 9 using the RPM method & have opted to keep the older version of java as well.

Setting up Java variables

This is the last step of installation & has to be followed irrespective of the methods used to install Java 9 i.e. we need to setup the ‘JAVA_HOME’ , ‘JRE_HOME’ & ‘PATH’ variables on our systems. To setup the variables make the entries mentioned below at the bottom in file ‘~/.bash_profile’, where ‘~’ is the home of the user,

$ vi ~/bash_profile

export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk-9

export JRE_HOME=/opt/jdk-9/jre

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/jdk-9/bin:/opt/jdk-9/jre/bin

If we have used the rpm method for installation, we need to make the following entries in the same file (~/bash_profile) as the location for Java 9 is different when installed via rpm package,

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk-9/

export JRE_HOME=/usr/java/jdk-9/jre

export PATH=”$PATH:/usr/java/jdk-9/bin:/usr/java/jdk-9/jre/bin”

Once the setting have been saved, we can use the new Java 9 installation on the system. With this our tutorial is now complete, please leave your queries/questions below.

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